1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a data management apparatus and a data processing method.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, the amount of private content such as images taken with digital camera or content acquired via a network has increased rapidly due to the advent of large-capacity storage media as well as the spread of digital cameras and improvements in network environments. In some households, for example, images taken using a digital camera are stored on large-capacity storage media and desired images are read out for use from the stored images as the need arises.
However, searching for and retrieving desired data efficiently becomes more difficult as the volume of target data increases.
To solve this problem, methods for saving data after the data has been automatically classified and search systems that improve search efficiency have been proposed. As for methods of automatically classifying data, for example, a method has been proposed in which images in a folder are classified by being segmented, in order, into same free character groups, consecutive file number groups, and same date information groups, with specific folder names being assigned to each group. For example, see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-196529.
As for search systems, methods of searching for document data with characters or words as search keys are generally widely known, although in the case of data such as moving images, still images and audio, difficulties are encountered in designating the contents of the data itself as a search key.
In view of this, methods have been proposed that improve search efficiency by assigning the contents or characteristics of data to the data as additional information (metadata) irrespective of the data type, thereby facilitating data usability. Some metadata represents keywords and descriptions with language information and other metadata represents moving image characteristics or audio characteristics that the apparatus can easily search for as non-language information such as attachments.
However, the task of assigning such metadata to all mass data targeted for management is not always easy.
Also, when the user assigns metadata manually, different metadata gets assigned where the same metadata should have been appended, or the same metadata gets assigned where different metadata should have been appended, as a result of which data is not classified as the user intended. Therefore, difficulties are encountered in efficiently searching for data using metadata.
To solve this problem, a method has been proposed in which searching for data is facilitated by extracting attachment information from an image file, further extracting a keyword of the individual corresponding to the extracted attachment information, and adding the keyword to the attachment information. For example, see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-72614.
However, with the method proposed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-196529, the user is unable to find out how desired data has been classified since that the files are automatically classified, making it difficult use classification efficiently in searching for data.
With the method proposed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-72614, the same keyword is assigned to images taken of the same object since the user assigns a keyword of the individual in advance to specific image attachment information, making classification in line with the intent of the user impossible.
Thus, the user may not know which metadata has been assigned to what data, making it difficult to search for desired data without knowing how the data has been classified.